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A lot has been written so far about what to expect next year — some valid, some not.

But has that ever stopped me from joining the year-end pile-on? Perish the thought.

So here are 10 things to expect in 2009.

Or not.

Remember, objects may be closer than they appear, and your mileage may vary.

10. 2009 will be the year of Linux. But so will 2010, as well as 2011 and 2012. In fact, by 2013, the last pair of eyes on the planet will finally glaze over when a Linux writer proclaims the following year to be the year of Linux, and the more thoughtful pundits will just know that it’s now understood that the next year will be our year, for whatever reason, and they’ll write about something a tad more significant.

9. Fedora 11 will outshine Fedora 10. As hard as it may be to believe — and after a month I still can’t find a flaw with Fedora 10 — Fedora 11 will be an encore performance of what can best be described as a rock-solid distro, even for machines that go back a few years (in my case, a Dell 5000 Inspiron laptop and a Dell Optiplex desktop). Sadly, people will continue to be under the mistaken impression that Fedora is too “cutting edge” for anyone other than the most experienced superuser who might be too lazy to negotiate the Gentoo labyrinth (yes, that’s a gauntlet thrown at the feet of my Fedora colleagues to work next year on dispelling that stupid myth . . . ).

8. The UFC pits Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman against each other in a feature bout. What happens though is not one of those ridiculous near-death experiences for some poor troglodyte who normally gets suckered into the ring, but an epiphany for the entire FOSS community: Stallman and Torvalds meet at mid-ring and circle each other warily. Stallman opens the bout by saying maybe he was a little hasty in demanding GNU be stuck on the front of Linux, but Torvalds comes back with openly welcoming the option of joining the two names. Barriers between open source and free software dissolve. GNOME and KDE advocates embrace in a worldwide “kumbaya.” Planets align. Then I wake up.

7. Zenwalk increases the pace of its development. It becomes Zenrun, and in finding that they can add and release improvements to an already above-average distro at an even faster pace, they rename it Zenfly in 2010.

6. Lindependence comes to Redmond, Wash. The hall is rented, the fliers posted, and the riot police stand at the ready, but they remain wary since they don’t want to repeat the WTO fiasco in Seattle a decade ago. Nevertheless, yours truly — in a tribute to another overweight bald guy in the digital industry — opens the event with an insane onstage monkey dance that also brings him to within inches of a heart attack while Ken Starks unsuccessfully diverts the press’ attention. The Digital Tipping Point’s Christian Einfeldt, however, gets it all on video. Meanwhile, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu reps — along with others who choose to join Lindependence in 2009 — hand out live CDs and demonstrate their distros. Yes, that’s Red Hat’s “Truth Happens” video (click here for Quick Time fans) looping in the background all the while.

5. Mandriva gets in touch with its feminine side. This distro renames itself Womandriva and becomes a more reasonable, nurturing distro, finally dropping the adolescent Mandrake zeitgeist from its early days. The distro’s leadership also realizes what a huge mistake it was to let Adam Williamson go and rectifies that situation, adding a huge bonus to his salary.

4. The Madagascar Penguins join Tux as the Linux mascots. Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and the Private make Tux one of their own in their commando unit. Incidentally — this is true (you can look it up) — on the Madagascar DVD, the penguins provide their own commentary on their scenes. When Private is struggling to operate a computer while taking over the ship, Skipper comments, “What are you doing up there, playing Tetris? You told me you knew Linux, Private!” Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.

3. Windows 7 will be worse than Vista, as hard as that may be to believe. This development will result in yet another $30 million Microsoft ad campaign diverting attention from this latest offering. Realizing they picked the wrong Seinfeld character in their first campaign, the ad agency casts Jason Alexander with Bill Gates, making Gates look like the “cool one” in comparison.

2. Everyone joins the Ubuntu family. In an effort not to confuse brand new GNU/Linux users with the daunting tasks of trying to wrap their minds around 350 different distributions, distros give themselves new names: Fedbuntu, Debuntu, openBUNTU, Sabayuntu, Damn Small Buntu, CentBuntu, Dreambuntu, Slackbuntu, Pupbuntu, Mepbuntu, gNewBuntu, among others. Solbuntis and OpenSolbuntis also join the ranks.

1. Linux Foundation’s “I’m Linux” video contest’s winning entry grabs an Oscar. After Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ad campaign, and Microsoft following with a painfully original “I’m a PC” theme, the Linux Foundation garners thousands of entries in its “I’m Linux” video contest. The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences nominates the winner, which ends up awing those judging and the statuette for Best Short Film goes to the winner.

There are other developments, like the conflicts that the new OpenBSD Christian Edition causes, which may be addressed in a later blog.

Have a happy and prosperous new year.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs HeliOS Solutions West in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Apparently, spending $10 million on Jerry Seinfeld and $300 million on an ad campaign in which both Seinfeld and Bill Gates try to show off their “human” side isn’t paying off, and Microsoft is pulling their ad campaign tomorrow, according to this blog item.

In fact, in a classic case of advertising euthanasia, a third episode in the ad campaign may not see the light of day.

Pity.

Not.

The fact is when you compare this ad campaign — which was as mysterious as it was offensive — to others, whether it’s the current “I’m a Mac” or even the legendary “1984” ad, you can see an interesting parallel: Just as Apple blows Microsoft out of the water with its technology — OS X versus Vista? You decide — it also parallels its superiority in its ads. Conversely, Microsoft shows it’s ineptitude both in their inability to hire and execute an effective ad campaign in the same fashion that it produces inadqueate software.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs HeliOS Solutions West in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Arguably, you could maybe give the Jerry Seinfeld-Bill Gates a pass for not hitting one out of the park with their first ad, despite the fact that it was a bunt foul in the annals of advertising. And maybe I was a bit hasty with saying that the $300 million that they spent on this ad campaign is wasted

Or maybe not.

You be the judge of this, the next Microsoft ad in the series, which is probably as bad — no, it was as esoteric — as the first one. What’s even sadder is that it’s not funny.

Not only that, at least the Mac ads are humorous and — hey — the ads actually talk about computers.

It will be interesting to see what comes next. I could understand that you may not want to directly involve computers in an ad — it worked in this ad 24 years ago — but the way the current ad agency is handling Microsoft’s ad borders on criminal.

Good thing for us, too.

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs HeliOS Solutions West in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Bob Lewis, who I’m proud to say is my “partner in Linux crime” in the Felton Linux Users Group, sent me an e-mail this morning with a link to the first Microsoft commercial featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld (whose dramatis persona, incidentally, spent several years as a Mac user on what can arguably be called the most watched comedy in television history).

If this is what Microsoft spent $300 million on, I think I’d ask for a refund.

On second thought, maybe that’s the point: Perhaps it’s payback for all the money people have spent over the years to migrate and update (or downgrade, in the case of Vista) and buy additional software (anti-virus ware, for example) to make Microsoft’s software, well, work. It also begs the question about how many times Microsoft intends to take it on the chin, in the public eye.

[I also sent the link to one of my best friends and best baseball buddy Pam Tao, and she got an error message on Internet Exploder. Poetic justice anyone? Here’s the message (thanks, Pam): “Internet Explorer cannot open the internet site http://justinflood.com/?p=528. Operation aborted.” If you get the same message, drop the ?p=528 and scroll down a few items on Justin’s blog.]

(Fedora ambassador Larry Cafiero runs HeliOS Solutions West in Felton, California, and is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)